Do What You Love

When clients ask me how they can heal after experiencing prolonged relational trauma, the first thing I often ask is one of the simplest, yet also the most complex:

What sets your soul on fire with enthusiasm? What do you love to do?

Often I’m met with blank stares, and I understand—prolonged relational trauma has a tendency of muffling personal needs. When the individual you trusted the most turns out to be not only untrustworthy but unsafe and even toxic, your world disappears. It’s not merely shattered—it feels as if it has completely vanished, because all you thought to be true has turned out to be false.

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This hurts, to say the least. I’m not going to even try to put into words what this experience is like, because to do so would be a minimization, no matter what descriptions I try use.

If you’ve experienced this type of trauma, you understand what I mean.

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Trauma expert and researcher Peter Levine points out that

… it is apparent how a dilemma of profound consequences is set up if the people who are supposed to love and protect us are also the ones that have hurt, humiliated, and violated us. This ‘double-bind’ undermines a basic sense of self and trust in one’s own instincts. In this way one’s whole sense of safety and stability becomes weakened.

When the sense of self is undermined on a repeated basis as the cycle of abuse repeatedly churns, the undermining begins to feel more like decimation. Clients will often tell me that they no longer recognize themselves. Sometimes the disassociation will go so far that physical recognition becomes fuzzy. They’ll look in the mirror and wonder, who is that exhausted person staring back at me?

(Joeyy Lee / Unsplash)

Feeling a loss of self is a common consequence when living with betrayal trauma and relational abuse—yet healing is possible. Those frayed threads that compose the beautiful tapestry of your life can be woven again into a stunning, color-filled panorama.

One important way of recovering your sense of self is by recalling those things you once loved to do. What filled you with joy, what made your heart sing?

Creative expression, athletic endeavors, healthy social engagements, listening to certain music, enjoying a special tea that used to be your favorite, reading enriching spiritual books, praying in Adoration, traveling to your dream location, nurturing a garden or a pet … No matter what your passions may be, if you’ve let them fall by the wayside in an effort to navigate a toxic relationship, it’s time to find them once again, to bring them back to life.

I understand this may be overwhelming. Perhaps you don’t know where to begin, have a fear of failure, or feel so exhausted from trying to survive your difficult situation that you find yourself in shut-down mode.

These experiences are normal—and temporary.

Healing begins with baby steps. For example, if you’re an artist who hasn’t picked up a paintbrush in a decade, jumping back in with a full-sized project may be too overwhelming. Instead paint a solitary flower, an emerging butterfly, even a single dot. The point isn’t how much you do—or on how grand of a scale—but that you begin in the first place.

And then, slowly, keep on going.

Begin to regain who you were meant to be.

Remember what you once loved, and pursue it.

Reach back into yourself in order to find yourself once again. You’re still there, even if you feel you’ve been hidden for decades. Your true self is just waiting to emerge.

“My dove, hiding in the clefts of the rock,
in the coverts of the cliff,
show me your face,
let me hear your voice;
for your voice is sweet
and your face is beautiful.”

(Song of Songs 2:14)

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